OOC: Hey Kayla, thanks for joining us. This is the sandbox page where you can practise the way we write at Sonora. Here are three tips to improve the post you submitted:1). We aim for good standards of spelling and grammar at the site – for example, using capital letters at the start of sentences.2). Make the content your own. This is a creative writing site, and house points are earnt based on the quality of the writing. Your entry appears to be the instructions from the wikipedia article with your character's name inserted. The wiki is there for guidelines only on how particular spells or charms are performed. 3). Your post does not need to cover the entire period of the lesson, and it can be helpful to end a post with your character getting the attention of someone else, so that they can interact.

Read the post below, by one of your classmates and then have a go at writing a response in character as Kayla. You can start again from the beginning of class if that makes it easier.

In character: Jamie slouched into Potions. The fact that his parents were obsessed with the subject, and were constantly ramming it down his neck, made it his least favourite class. He almost wanted to excel in everything else and let his grade in this lag behind, just to annoy them. But he knew that not bringing top grades home in everything was more than his life was worth. He wasn't too keen on the new teacher either. Professor Fawcett had been a dull and dried up old fossil, so he wasn't sad to see him go, but... well, an Asian witch nagging him to do better as Potions.... He really needed another one of those in his life!

The fact she began class with a pop quiz did not endear her to him any further, although his ears pricked up at the mention of half points for creativity. So, it was a pop quiz where he didn't even have to get the answers right, so long as he got something? That was an interesting twist. He'd meant to do the reading, he really had. Well, sort of. Ok, he hadn't really cared and had just planned to memorise everything to pass his end of term tests, so he wasn't really sure about any of the real answers. It wasn't like it was an ingredient his mother let a twelve year old mess with. Dragon blood was highly revered in their house, practically sacred.

Traditional Korean medicine he wrote, mostly cos it was bound to be true for at least one of the bonkers remedies his mother insisted on and Professor Yu probably wouldn't be in a position to call him out on it. Sacred Korean rituals, he added, for much the same reason. He then considered what kind of Potions it might really be used for. It didn't exactly sound like a nice, wholesome ingredient, so he added vengeance potions, to the list. He figured his best bet was then to get creative, and so wrote in quick succession scaring your enemies by painting threatening symbols on their doors, playing pranks, faking murders. He continued in this fashion, alternating with the few actually realistic ideas that occurred to him, until he had 12. It was kind of challenging towards the end to keep coming up with things, and he almost wondered what the twelve real uses could be, unless they were just all different potions.

He handed his test in and stretched, slouching down whilst Yu ran a question and answer session. When she was finished, he set to work without much enthusiasm. You could buy this antidote cheaply enough and, in an emergency, that was probably quicker than the prep time plus the forty minutes it took to brew. He didn't really see the point. As he rummaged for the ingredients, he realised he'd forgotten to stock up on a few Western basics. His mother, for all she knew that they learnt Western recipes at school (and for all she insisted on doing Korean Potions with them in the holidays) still packed them off to school with every Asian herb on the planet. It would clearly serve no functional good but it was part of her weird obsession with making sure they understood their heritage. Like a trunk of funky plants was going to do that.

“Reckon it'll explode if I use this instead?” he asked his neighbour, holding up a small packet of crushed green leaves.

Kayla was excited for potions class. she added 1 Bezoar to the mortar & crushed it into a very fine powder using the pestle. she then added 4 measures of the crushed Bezoar to her cauldron & added 2... more

OOC: Hello. I'm still new to the message. How does one use bold, italic, and underline here? IC: Anita could hear Jamie talking to his neighbor. She sat at a table across the way, and already she was ... more

OOC - You can use html tags. is for bold, is for italics, is for underline (all without the spaces, which I just put in so they'd show up rather than activating). To end the bold/italics/underline... more

OOC: Sorry about that, with Anita's brother. I've changed it on her character sheet I drew up, so that way her brother is attending a different school. Thanks for the tip about the html tags. IC:... more

OOC - Good job, both on the post and on catching your own mistake. As Jamie had called out to another student 'a few seats along' you could have chosen for this to be Anita, and to have responded to... more

OOC: Thanks. Yeah, I didn't think about that. I know this is for practice, but at least it's giving me the feel for what will happen for real. So, I guess classes start September 1st for the IC. Then ... more